Manifesto implementation main challenge”. Thus read the headline on the online edition of The Daily Star on January 7. It quoted the General Secretary of Awami League (AL) talking to reporters at Bangabhaban after the oath-taking ceremony of cabinet ministers.

World Economic Forum's website had a headline saying “Why home is the least safe place to be a woman” as an introduction to a new report by the United Nations which chronicles widespread domestic violence and abuse perpetrated by husbands, current or former intimate partners or boyfriends, and lovers.

This week's G20 Summit to be held in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, will be keenly observed across the globe for several reasons. First, it comes amidst an ongoing trade war between US and China that appears to be getting out of hand and can be resolved only by direct intervention by its leaders.

Human consump-tion of fossil fuel is a significant contributor to climate change. Economists have for ages been advocating for a tax on carbon emissions to combat air pollution. The tax, popularly known as “carbon tax”, is levied on products that emit carbon and is one of the measures adopted by many countries to reduce the consumption of fossil fuel in an effort to address the threat of climate change.

Climate change will hit Bangladesh, and rising temperature and sea level will affect millions in both the short- and long-term. However, it has also embarked on a path to accelerate growth and achieve middle-income status in the immediate future.

It is now agreed by all that financing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development programme to reach the SDG targets will be a tough challenge. On September 24, the Secretary-General of the United Nations,

Prime Minister Theresa May recently was on a three-nation tour of Africa. Her first stop was South Africa, the first by a British prime minister since 2011. She then went on to Nigeria and Kenya, becoming the first British PM to visit the East African country in over 30 years.

Air pollution in big cities of Bangladesh, particularly Dhaka and Chittagong, is an ongoing concern for all. Only recently, WHO ranked Dhaka's air quality as the third worst, behind New Delhi and Cairo, in a study of megacities with a population of 14 million or more.

The Rohingyas who moved to Bangladesh reached an important milestone on August 25, 2018. The first anniversary of the exodus from their homeland in Myanmar was observed with solemnity in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and everywhere that the Rohingya diaspora have now spread out to.

Pakistan's founding father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, reportedly was disappointed with the British partition of India in 1947 because it divided Punjab and Bengal. Jinnah complained that he was given to rule a “truncated and moth-eaten Pakistan.”

There is a popular saying in America, “You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand politics.” However, I have never heard anyone disparage economists in such a fashion except only recently during the Trump Era.

Two recent reports depicting the state of human rights in Bangladesh point to some alarming statistics. The first report, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics' “Report on Bangladesh Sample Vital Statistics 2017”(RBSVS), came out in June 2018. Among its many findings, one relates to the prevalence of underage marriage for women.